What constitutes a “good service”?

[Starmill]

In addition to this, gwr has allways been quite shy of going into csl2 over crew shortages, even if its having a widespread impact.

I do think when you get to the point you're leaving passengers behind and don't have any alternatives in place for several hours you don't actually get much choice.

 

[The exile]

It’s hardly accurate to describe it as “propoganda” when they literally publish live running info for every service. There’s also absolutely nothing to stop people from searching for their individual service, irrespective of what the summary says.

I'm not sure how else to describe something masquerading as public information which at best is completely unreliable and at worst attempts to disguise the truth or to spread a downright lie. Yes, I know there will be times when they say there is "a good service" and there really is - but then a clock which has stopped is absolutely correct twice a day but is worse than useless for telling the time (worse than useless because there's a danger you might actually believe it)

 

[Jimini]

Would it have been covered by disruption between Bournemouth and Southampton Central? I'm struggling to remember if that notice only mentioned SWR but I'm pretty sure it was up at some point. It's not particularly helpful for people up north to have to check for disruption half way down the country of course!

I was on 1M58 from Southampton to Manchester which got in annoyingly 56 minutes late. And when I arrived there was a platform alteration for an XC arrival (arrivals can get announced as alterations? Learn something new every day!) from Bristol that was 2 hours late.

So XC was definitely having major issues.

I was on 1O26, the 1826 from Coventry to Reading. I was loosely planning on getting the 1926, but that was cancelled. On top of the Bournemouth <> Southampton Central problems, there was also major disruption Wolverhampton <> Birmingham if I recall correctly.

The Massive wait at Coventry was us waiting for the driver / crew to arrive on heavily delayed 1M66. The old alarm bells did start to ring when it got rerouted onto P4 at the last minute (presumably to keep it out of the way of everything else while we waited for the crew)!

At least the comms. were good and they genuinely seemed to be running what they could all the way rather than turning back short wherever possible. Fair play to them for that!

 

[Kite159]

This is certainly true, but also there is an overarching issue in among others of a shortage of train crew in various places. Obviously for the most part that has affected Sundays but clearly Saturday isn't free of it.

Can you blame the staff for not wanting to volunteer to work overtime on the Saturday night vomit comits?

 

[Starmill]

Can you blame the staff for not wanting to volunteer to work overtime on the Saturday night vomit comits?

Certainly not. Same as how I wouldn't blame them for booking leave in July.

 

[Krokodil]

I was going to say, many operators have split their route up and can divide status up accordingly. I think even GWR can to some extent.

I don't think that there's an operator in the country (other than Island Line if you were to count that as an independent operator) that shouldn't list its routes seperately. TfL lists each tube/tram/heavy rail route seperately before saying "good service on all other lines".

 

[Brubulus]

I don't think that there's an operator in the country (other than Island Line if you were to count that as an independent operator) that shouldn't list its routes seperately. TfL lists each tube/tram/heavy rail route seperately before saying "good service on all other lines".

C2C could be a contender since pretty much all services use the same core route out of London.

 

[TheManBehind]

So “good service” has to mean “you don’t need to investigate further - your train is running and near enough on time”. Since it clearly doesn’t, it is at best pointless; at worst deliberate deception.

To be honest, this is why I hate rainbow boards. Map-based disruption representations make far more sense, particularly given the interconnected nature of many routes. And I say that as someone who was responsible for them for many years!

 

[The exile]

To be honest, this is why I hate rainbow boards. Map-based disruption representations make far more sense, particularly given the interconnected nature of many routes. And I say that as someone who was responsible for them for many years!

Or just “enter your station” - if you really need to know about service disruption, you’ll know either an origin or destination. More complicated with multi-leg journeys, but most of them are likely to involve more than one operator anyway.

 

[Frontera2]

To be honest, this is why I hate rainbow boards. Map-based disruption representations make far more sense, particularly given the interconnected nature of many routes. And I say that as someone who was responsible for them for many years!

Couldn’t agree with you more, that’s why at my TOC we created the live map, offering a much more localised and nuanced view of disruption.

 

[styles]

While I appreciate people could enter a specific station to get more detailed information, I can't see how it's helpful to show passengers a 'good service' message when the next two trains to Cardiff are cancelled entirely.

Surely it would be better to say something like 'Disruption on Cardiff services, good service elsewhere'.

Plenty of people will commute between Bristol and Cardiff and if they see a message saying there's a good service, it's hardly unreasonable for them to expect trains to their destination to be running on time or close to on time. Some passengers will (rightly) read this, head to the station for their planned departure, only to find they're having to wait hours.

A lot of passengers don't mind delays providing they're given timely and up-to-date information about them and what alternatives there are.

 

[Snow1964]

With a network the size of GWR, it isn't really practical to provide alerts like this, it needs separating into lines or regions, as there will almost allways be some cancellations at any given time

GWR already separate it into 12 sections (there isn't a 6, although numbered to 13)

If they have the data in 12 parts, should be possible to list status for each of the line groups, more realistically listing those not good then grouping good for other GWR lines.

https://www.gwr.com/-/media/gwr-sc-website/files/about-gwr/what-you-can-expect/our-performance/GWR-Periodic-Web-Report-P2603.pdf

On the link, Cancellations vary upto 8.59% (average 3.90%)
On time varies from 51.48% to 91.27% (average 64.09%)

Although with rates like this, what is a normal service wouldn't be classed as good by many punters, more mediocre than good.

 

[Bikeman78]

I've often seen London Underground advertise severe delays but travelled without problem. The most recent example was the Bakerloo line heading south from Paddington on Thursday. A train arrived within 30 seconds. Train two was two minutes away and train three was seven minutes away.

 

[Turtle]

I've often seen London Underground advertise severe delays but travelled without problem. The most recent example was the Bakerloo line heading south from Paddington on Thursday. A train arrived within 30 seconds. Train two was two minutes away and train three was seven minutes away.

One of the most annoying words used on the railway. "Good" is a relativistic word. The correct expression should be "service as scheduled".

 

[The exile]

I've often seen London Underground advertise severe delays but travelled without problem. The most recent example was the Bakerloo line heading south from Paddington on Thursday. A train arrived within 30 seconds. Train two was two minutes away and train three was seven minutes away.

It may well have been that each of those trains was 30 minutes behind schedule, though. On a metro-type service that doesn’t matter to the passenger, but a long gap does.

 

[Bikeman78]

One of the most annoying words used on the railway. "Good" is a relativistic word. The correct expression should be "service as scheduled".

I take your point but as a leisure user, I think the London Underground service usually is good. I can only think of one occasion where the service has gone into meltdown. I have rarely had to wait more than five minutes, and over 10 minutes is virtually unheard of. I accept that I would probably have a different view if I were a daily user.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jul 2025 ==

It may well have been that each of those trains was 30 minutes behind schedule, though. On a metro-type service that doesn’t matter to the passenger, but a long gap does.

Agreed. I must have been lucky and rarely hit a big gap in the wake of disruption. I recall being in a queue eastbound from Northfields to Acton Town but that only added around 10 minutes to the journey. Not ideal but definitely not a severe delay. I have seen the Piccadilly where everything was about 15 late, but trains were still turning up at frequent intervals so the only people affected were the drivers booking off 15 minutes late.

 

[andyjhatton]

Not today between Birmingham and Euston, that's a good example

 

[TheManBehind]

It may well have been that each of those trains was 30 minutes behind schedule, though. On a metro-type service that doesn’t matter to the passenger, but a long gap does.

TfL run their service statuses based on platform wait times on the underground, which is rather neat.

Couldn’t agree with you more, that’s why at my TOC we created the live map, offering a much more localised and nuanced view of disruption.

Yes - rather a fan of the principle, even if I think the stylised maps operators use make things more difficult compared to, say, a branded OSM overlay!

 

[Brubulus]

Do any TOCs use your phone's location to locate the nearest station to you and then provide the service information for that specific station?

 

[Horizon22]

I've often seen London Underground advertise severe delays but travelled without problem. The most recent example was the Bakerloo line heading south from Paddington on Thursday. A train arrived within 30 seconds. Train two was two minutes away and train three was seven minutes away.

Probably you are at the "front of the queue" and got lucky. Having such a small gap between trains probably means there was a sit down earlier, and there is a large gap in the Southbound direction in front of the first train that arrived.